Why the uranium shorts are wrong (Guy Keller interview)

Rhino you dog money miners. Guy Keller from Tribeca is on his way and just got, well, not Guy, but uranium is brought to you by Quattro Project Engineering I believe as the EPC paste experts. Lads, get them over to Rook one. Look, the bloody backfill and the reticulation that has to go in there. They've put kilometres of it in at Olympic Dam. They're the pace plan experts send them over to the Atabaska Basin. And for that matter, any other commodity as well, I reckon.

Oh mate, they'll. Be flat out on this if they get it. Blown away chatting with the team last week. Phenomenal what they can't do. There's not many things, you know. Exactly bloody next Gen. Give Jess Palmer and Quattro buzz right now. So this was around 2, but it probably worked out better 'cause guys may be closer to picking the bottom now that he was when we originally caught it a couple of weeks ago. Well, one one month wiser that that gap and it was a relatively eventful month.

And regardless, since we had Guy on the last time and actually shared the conversation, a lot has happened in the the world of uranium, hasn't it, Maddie? Yeah, I think and look we've gone through it all companies specific a lot about the the contracting market guys, obviously got some goodies to the ground with utilities funds, everyone involved in the uranium bet whether that bets up or down. So always a great chat with Guy the Australia, the voice of nuclear for Australia. Here we go.

Let's get into it right how you think uranium in Australia, but talk about the poster boy of it, Mr. God Keller. But you've taken well, since Quakes has fallen off Twitter, mate. You've had to take the global mantle I think, mate. I don't feel like a poster boy with the, the markets going the way they're going. But you know, hopefully maybe I look like 1.

No worries. So we actually this is a bit of a round two effort, but I think it oh God, when we did it last time, I think it was just before boss's quarterly, I think and we had a bit of a tech issue. So as we said, you're probably glad you didn't know that one didn't go to air because you might more chance of being right now. One step, one day closer, right? As I said, you run the oh, forget it every time. The nuclear, uranium and what's your funds name, guy? Tribeca.

I do it every time. Tribeca Tribeca Nuclear Energy Opportunities Fund. That's the one mate. Stride. Take it away, boys. Let's talk nuclear and uranium. I assume that's what we're

talking about with the guy. I think it is mate. I think the I think the logical place to to start this one guy is the the kind of elephant in the room, and that's the massive short interest in a heap of the names. So free the top five most shorted stocks on the ASX. I'm sure this is no surprise to you is uranium miners now are one's a developer and two miners. So I'm interested in the to to hear your thoughts, particularly with the lens that your strategy is a long short.

You're obviously behind the the long term narrative of uranium here, but how are you thinking about this on on the Surface? I think he's asking if you still made money on the way down, guy. It can be interpreted anyway. Look, if somebody, I said the other day, if somebody had given me a crystal ball six months ago and said this is going to be the the pricing of a lot of the uranium stocks, I would have thrown the crystal ball out, I

think. But yeah, look, it's been, I mean, it's kind of, I mean, I, I've got to view it in a positive, positive lens. The sentiment's terrible. No generalist wants to touch the space. Shorts are at all time high and continue to seem to be adding and not just in the ASX, but we're seeing it in North America

as well. And, you know, I kind of sit there and I say now I don't see the marginal gain of, of, of shorts being added down here because we're getting such a, an interesting part of the market that it's not going to take much for that sentiment to change. And you know, it's, you've got again, hedge fund dinners in, in New York, I think there was eight or ten of these guys at a dinner 2 weeks ago, 60%, like four or five of them were all pitching short uranium.

And one, one was asked, you know what, why, why are you still short uranium? And he said, you know, because it's a really easy short to control. And, you know, there's an element of truth to that. There's no big boys in this trade. And and as I said, generalists are all sitting on the sideline with a lot of things. But yeah, I mean, I it, it, it, it's a head scratchers to, to how committed they've been to the trade, to be honest to me. Why is it?

Why is it consensus short short uranium amongst the the the hedge fund crowd in crowd in New York there guy? I mean, to be honest, they were kind of a little bit late to the party, right? The, the short really started out of Asia in the ASX stuff last year, in the second-half of last year. And that was thematic guys responding. From what I could gather, there was a, a bunch of guys that had made funds that had made money

being short the lithium space. They tried to roll across to rare earths and realised that that there really wasn't a lot of borough available in in any other's names. And then, you know, somebody pointed out that spot price of moving from 107 to 80 odd at the time and said, you know what this is? This is actually not a bad short. So the ASIC stocks underperformed a lot of the North American stuff last year because they were benefiting from the tech, you know, a data

centre AI type thematic. But I think when that DeepSeek, I got it right. Normally I say deep fake or deep DeepSeek. I think when that came came out in January that that sort of gave the US hedges a, a runway to go and get into that short. I think you know, plus I knew there was lots of overhang sitting in the spot market.

The spot spot physical uranium trust has been pretty ineffective because that's been really easy to control stopping that going up, going to a premium and they've, you know, these hedges have been in that. So, so it hints back to the it's an easy shot to control. He's he's right.

The, the deep seat reaction guy was, was super, super interesting. And I've, I've heard you speak to the point that you don't have a lot of your demand thesis backed up by data center demand and and these sorts of things. But I am curious to hear your thoughts on the the sort of joltiness, the sort of frothiness in the market that such an announcement would lead to 10 plus percent movements in the stocks. What does that kind of tell you about the broader market sentiment at the moment?

Oh, I mean, look, market sentiment across all sectors is is pretty nervous and dancing close to the door at the moment when you throw market sentiment of of resources where, you know, the resource sector had a pretty good January. People made some money for the first time in a while and they're all nervous. I mean, you know, we're waking up to a different tariff headline every day and and then seeing multiple changes to that, you know, during our day as

well. So, you know, it kind of frustrated me at the time because I didn't really think there was that much benefit to the uranium stocks on the build up of all that sort of tech interest. But they certainly got got whacked on the way down. And you know, I mean, it's names that realistically are not going to be supplying uranium to any tech company build out in the next 5 years. Also getting caught up in that.

And you know, I think again, that's just this other just another bow in the, in that sort of short thematic of being able to point to that being able to point to with the physical overhang we had in the spot market, you know, being able to point to tariffs and all sorts of things to, you know, to to add to that trade. So they've just been hammering that point home. So how, how many other

organisations like yourself that have a long short strategy for uranium are there around the world in, in the lens that like, OK, for Australia, for instance, we've got two producers that you can get enough borrow on to short. Then you've got some developers like deep yellow as well that

are, that are up there as well. But once everyone's long short and say you're, you know, net 10% long or 110% long and you've got to hedge something is there, is there an accumulation of shorts as well that are contributing to these shorts just 'cause there's not as many names too short to hedge yourself? Oh yeah. Look at my, I hear, I hear so many different iterations of, of why people are short. Some of the, you know, that boss Paladin deep yellow versus their long other things.

And you know, and then you look in North America, I mean, you've got a bunch of Canadian tariff baskets and almost every U.S. investment bank's got out there and they're all short baskets obviously because the tariffs and you've got like Denison and Next Gen. in those baskets there. There's no way that either of those companies are going to be producing cake in a can to go to the US during this current Trump administration, yet they're thrown into these short baskets.

You know, I can understand when you look at that and say Kamiko's in there because they're selling a lot of uranium to the United States at the moment. So you you're getting a whole bunch of, you know, that sort of stuff as well. So as I said, I've probably heard a dozen different iterations of various reasons of being short something versus long something else. And you know it's from the perspective of me being long

short. I mean we are basically a, a levered long portfolio and have been. So our short is not necessarily a a big structural short, it's it tends to be shorts maybe with country risk where we might be, you know, long a country asset and short something else there. If there's going to be some geopolitical problems, you know, short via ETFs and and and hedging longs via put options, which is mainly US listed stuff and some Canadian stuff.

So you know, again, should I have rethought that and been net short the portfolio as I said six months ago, I would have thrown out the crystal ball because there was just so much positive news flow coming from the the nuclear side of things. Yeah, Cos and how does it when they go when you're short URN or URA, does that short interest in that ATF then translate into the actual underlying equity holdings as well or not? That's a good question. I actually don't know the answer

to that. I would assume. I mean, it may be I. I doubt it though, because you know, it's, it's, it's shares that are in existence already. So they've already been. Created. Yeah, it shouldn't be sure. It's it's against somebody who's long it. So you know, if if you were, if you were collapsing the share structure on the ETF like you can do with some, then then yes, absolutely there'd be selling pressure coming into those stocks. But now you're short against something that stocks that are

shares that are already out there. Such a substantial dislocation between the the spot price and the term price right now, Guy, why? Yeah, because the spot market's easy to I mean, look, we we we had Grand Isaac came out at CFO of Chemical came out at, at at the BMO conference and spoke about those ANU pounds. You know, that was a Kazakh physical vehicle that for whatever reason folded. They originally bought their just shy £2.5 million from Cosatoprom.

Cosatoprom for whatever reason wasn't going to buy them back back from them. And these are financial guys that spent almost nine months in the market trying to sell their material and there was plenty of people that wanted to buy it

from them. I'm guessing most of them are happy that they waited, you know, so we've had that overhang in that spot market, which is badly managed pounds grand Isaac alluded that that had cleared the market, misinterpreted his, his his context there, which he clarified later to some brokers, I heard. But again, they were in buying two weeks before he turned around at a conference and and mentioned that overhang. So they're not that silly.

They're not going to they're not going to go and buy pounds. They were basically mopping up the last of that. So, you know, and, and that, that has been badly managed And, and as I said, you know, the only real buyer that's not an end user has been the spark and that's been managed extraordinarily well to, to stop that trading at a premium. You know, they're buying it at sub 10% and they're selling it back out at -2% to stop at going to a premium.

Describe the mechanics there of of managing it from just from stop trading at a premium. I mean there aren't many like of these closed like vehicles like trust which which structurally do trade it at at premiums for very long period of time. They typically do trade at discounts, right? So what are you seeing there that that says it's being managed well? Just watching the flows and talking to all the brokers and, you know, and talking to the

spot guys. I mean, it's, it's when, when you do see it, as I said, at -10 or -11 they're coming in to buy and, and when it's getting close to NAV, they're selling it pretty aggressively and trying to hold that down. You know, it's, it's, it's, I would love to see spot, you know, if it gets close to a premium, I'd love to go and see them just go and raise, do an institutional raise it now plus one cent, go and raise 100 million bucks.

You know, and if you, if you're, if you're a fund like myself, invested in a whole bunch of uranium and nuclear related stocks and, and the spot price is being, you know, held back because the, the financial buyer's not able to play. And I pay up a couple of percent to do a raise at a premium. Why wouldn't? You. Yeah, Well, you're not forced. They're not forced to buy the pounds at whatever price it is they can.

Buy them in two months if they want, as I said, spot with 100 million bucks in their pocket is would be just a different a completely different market overnight. You know, I'd think that the the first hedgey that would be short would blink and it wouldn't be long before others follow it. But you know, look, that's just ideal world. If I don't, I don't know what their plans are and whether they can do that or whether they would do that, but I'd love to

see it happen. And as sorry, sorry you don't go and got, I was just going to say. And As for the end users, I mean again, Kamika alluded to it, something that we verified as well is that the fuel buyers, so the utilities, remember there's only about two dozen fuel buyers in the whole wide world. It's not like you've got 1000 steel mills bidding for a cargo vine or they're sitting there. You know when, when the term price is below the spot price, they're never mentioning the spot price.

They completely ignore it. But now that the spot price is down at 63 or 64 dollars or $65, wherever it is, the utilities are turning around to some of these developers and saying, hey, you need to lower your floor price on on our contract negotiations because the spot price is lower. And as I said, the likes of Chamico are turning around and saying, sorry pal, you know, we'll talk with an 8 handle, thanks very much. Because spots are relevant.

And Mr. Utility, if you step in and try to buy half £1,000,000 in the spot market, it's not going to be with A6 on it anymore. So they're not getting involved because they're trying to arbitrage that in their conversation with developers. But you look at so Constellation for example, again one broker picked it up in, in North America in their their financials, they talked about their 2025 CapEx, which was 3 billion odd dollars, U.S.

dollars. So they're the biggest nuclear generator in the United States at 21 gigs. They're restarting 3 Mile Island, so 1.7 billion going towards Three Mile Island. They made an explicit reference to having just over a billion U.S. dollars to spend on nuclear fuel with again an additional comment saying because we, we want to secure our needs as well as building inventory.

So Constellation need to spend a billion U.S. dollars this year on nuclear fuel, which includes uranium and and the spot market's sitting here ignoring it because they've all been so caught up in in that in all this short term noise. Kaiju will make you feel better about short term noise. I I noise you hear out of them's bloody Arser and Diamond dolls just punching into the earth. What does that sound like?

Just it sounds like victory, the victory of potentially finding some, the noise of ASO chips being accurately collected and deposited and sampled and assayed. I love that sound. Absolute state-of-the-art sampling techniques. So sample management. Is next to, next to, next to. I was going to say next to none, but that sounds bad. Nah. Well, in Speaking of management Traveller, you won't hear any noise from management up above a bad drill cost blowouts because

it just doesn't happen. They're on your side. The only sound I can like kind of think of that's probably most accurate is just the the cash register just ticking over. And working class man in the background, that's quite burden that. So that is K drill. Ohh. I just get get in their web and prepare to be dazzled. What what do you think BH PS

role is in the spot market? Because from what I hear, like most of the pounds that, you know, the size of what Olympic Dam produces is the same as what one of the Cosatomprom assets produces. Like £8,000,000 is a lot of uranium compared to these small startups. And from what I've heard, a lot of the stuff they sell, it usually goes into the spot market. Is that have they got a influence on the spot market since it's so thinly traded and they just don't really care.

They just get rid of it anyway. So they, they definitely used to and the subtle change that they've made is they're now talking directly, more directly to end users still selling on spot price terms. So again, Mr. Utility negotiating with Olympic dam with A6 handle isn't going to go into the spot market necessarily, but it's not going through the spot market as far as I'm aware. I mean, again, BHP was supposed to be the saviour of all utilities with Olympic Dam expansion.

And you know, again, a few months ago they put out their their documentation for the expansion of smelter and refinery, which doesn't include any uranium expansion, which means, you know, they won't be going to 12 or 14 or 16,000,000 lbs. Let the utilities have thought they'll be staying at 8. So, you know, they again, another bullish anecdote that the market kind of ignores because we're all in beer mode. Is it you got much colour on

what the contract environment's like at the moment in terms of like, are people like avoiding market reference pricing mechanisms because the spot's trading so much lower because you know, the flaws that they were talking about, you know, a couple of months ago well above what the spot price actually is now? Like are they going to more fixed price arrangements or any info out of the very opaque

market that you've got? Yeah. Look, I mean, I'm hearing obviously the likes of chemical and they're quite public about it. They're holding firm to the term price is their is their negotiating point and they can. So they are. I'm hearing as well that there's a few developers who are being potentially told they should be doing more contract discussions. Are breathing a little bit of a sigh of relief because they're able to say whoa, you know, the utilities are trying to tell us

to lower our floors. So we're not going to engage with them, which also means that they'll then delay decisions to go and restart or, or, or turn their minds on. And you know, those that are producing, so the 9 odd projects that started last year, you know, those that don't have contracts in place for for some of their incremental pounds are also breathing a sigh of relief because we've really only seen one of those projects come on reasonably on time. Everyone else has had had issues.

So. So whilst the utilities are sitting here trying to lower the floor price, most of them are wanting to you don't not acknowledge that the spot price should be a starting point for any any market related component they've got just because they're all in the agreement that it shouldn't be down here and. What what are the market related ways that they can calculate the price of the contract as it fluctuates? If they're not using the spot price, can you use the mid term price or?

Yeah, they can use any price really. I mean, some of what I'm hearing is, is a sort of an average, average between the spot and the term as a, as a way of sort of, you know, finding a middle ground there. The floors and ceilings are still, you know, quite popular, especially, you know, again, someone like Kamika doesn't necessarily need it, but but for, for some of these FID projects, they definitely want a floor in place.

And if it's got a six in front of it, they definitely won't be signing it. So, you know, the floors and ceilings are quite so they're, they're all calling them hybrid contracts, which means it's a mix of a whole bunch of things that makes it impossible for investors to work out exactly what they're getting until until they publish some sort of weird price in their quarterlies after they've sold it all.

We, we saw over the past year or so guy plenty of restarts or a few handful of restarts start to, to come back online, start to see some quarterlies come out. And the one of the common critiques had been that, that sort of 60 up to 100 bucks was an area that we would incentivize plenty of production. And obviously we've we've come back in price.

But just looking at the the performance of a lot of those race starts and the the true costing that we've started to see come out, has that changed your thinking on what incentive pricing will actually look like going forward? Oh yeah, 100 percent, 100%. I mean, it's as I said, we've had 9 odd projects that that have had some level of infrastructure CapEx and some level of production in the past. And most of them have had cost blowouts, time problems and, and

ramp up issues. And, and we're sitting here with a, with a, a short list of, of Greenfield projects that need to build a mine, build a road, build a power line, build a water pipe, build a, you know, the plant, build everything. And they're sitting in a, you know, kind of saying, Hey, don't worry about it. We know our costs will be OK. It definitely has raised it, which is why I think you're seeing some of these things, you know, push back on, on on a

myriad of reasons. But the utilities are still kind of believing the corporate presentation saying, well, these guys will be here in two years time. Well, no, they're not. You know, it's going to be an interesting year. And, and for a bunch of reasons, I think utilities will be forced back upstream this year.

And I think they're going to start really getting a bit of a, a reality shock that that some, a lot of these things aren't going to be coming on when they think they are what, what is and at these prices. What does that kind of look like? Is that JV stakes? Is that equity and projects? Is that helping them with debt and getting off take? How do you think about them coming upstream? Oh no. I just think in the fuel cycle they're going to be forced to

look at uranium. You know, I think this whole, I mean, we can get in the rabbit hole of Trump and Russia, but maybe I'll just briefly make the comment and see if you want to go down there. I think that a resolution between Russia and the United States with respect to Ukraine is actually going to be bullish uranium because it'll take the pressure out of the downstream being the conversion and enrichment that has so distracted all these utilities

for so long. And just in addition to that, the converters are going to be saying to these utilities, thanks very much for your contract, but we actually need the yellow cake delivered to our site because things are tight and we're not going to actually in the past, it's been a flexible arrangement in delivering the yellow cake.

So that's why I think utilities will be coming back for the uranium side, which means they're going to start trying to wave useless pieces of paper in front of these developers saying, here you go, here's a contract. And guys like me are going to say to these developers, that's actually a noose around your neck and a liability for you, as we've seen very publicly in a few of these, you know, restart projects that are hanging themselves on on legacy

contracts. We we can, we can go there if if you, if you want to guy, I'm not going to talk about the, the, the Russia Ukraine bit, but that's an interesting point. But it's, it's a bit of a theme with like kind of the, the smaller scale restarts as well, right? ASX Peninsula really, really burdened by delays and blowouts and and a contract liability. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, at $30 uranium, that contract looked OK, you know, and, and even had there been better decisions made

on that restart? And I mean, I guess there were some things that were beyond their control with respect to their drying and packaging. But you know, that's the thing, these utilities, it's a perfect example.

These utilities are saying we're here as your partner, but if you don't deliver us the uranium on time, then there's going to be a, a financial penalty, you know, and you know, they're provisioning money that needs to be going towards the, their, their, their plant restart and, and there will feel development. And that's what I'm saying to all these guys.

You know, if you're two or three or four years from production, unless you have a commitment from or a requirement from debt providers to, to, to show price certainty on a certain part of your future production, don't do it. And if you're then, if you are required to do it, put your start date 12 months after you're telling me or telling the market that you're going to start.

So that if you do have any delays, Because I guarantee you if you start on time and you've got a contract in 2028 with a utility to deliver some pounds and you say to them, hey, I've actually got pounds in 2027, I guarantee you they'll take them as opposed to sitting there in 2027 saying, sorry, I've had some delays, I don't have it. And they're saying, well, you need to find it or pay us some money for it.

So, you know, it's, it's been especially down here in the ASX investors, oh, we want to see a contract, we want to see contracts. It's like if you're going to get cake in the can, you're a viable project full stop. But you've got to be able to do that. We're going to talk stocks, boys, or.

Yeah. Absolutely. We'll start the probably the latest news. I'd say be on call last week guy we've seen that just essentially got hemorrhaged after I would say driven by the last line of that announcement that the CEO was departing, which was you know, tell he's pretty well regarded Fuller in the uranium in the ISR industry. And look, they I think we spoke

about him last week. It just looked like even the cash they had at the end of December, over half of that was due to go to boss, which the first bit's already obviously gone there. Just looks like they're under a still under a lot of financial pressure to achieve that. What's your take on non core and the Alta Mesa? Yeah, and everything else. They got going on firstly, yeah, doesn't Boss look like a rock star?

He just sold a whole bunch of pounds at 100 U.S. dollars a pound at the spot price at 65. So I. Think it'd be electing to. He'd be electing to take cash, I think. I believe that would be prudent, yeah. But I mean, look, it's, it's another perfect example of, of restarts not being easy.

There was, I mean, ironically, I, I was actually had a meeting with both of them on, on the Friday morning and, you know, three days before it all happened and didn't, didn't get any insight that that was going to happen. And you know, it's a perfect example, I guess of, of just things not going right and boards getting impatient or

frustrated. I mean, we've seen it here in, in some ASX lifted stocks as well, where boards have got impatient when you could probably argue the boards maybe have a responsibility in, in that process as well. But, but look, I mean, Encore, I mean, Alta Mesa, they had sort of a first of all problem. They turned the plant back on. Paul Goranson, CEO built that plant.

So he's a very good plant operator and they've got 1/3 of it operating and and they were getting better recoveries and better flows and than they anticipated. So they found themselves in a little bit of a bottleneck with well filled development. And, you know, they would now sort of reassuring the market that they've solved that problem and that the that potential bottleneck has been has been rectified with getting more rigs on. You know, they they've still got without pull there.

As I said, yes, there's some expertise around that plant, but the second Second Circuit is basically just a few wires that need to be plugged in. They've got certainly expertise to be able to do that. But yeah, I mean, you're right, again, it comes down to wording. That stock got slammed because the interim CEO announced it was a was a legal officer.

And so immediately the US markets assumed that because they were, you know, having to now deal with the US filing that there'd been some legal issue and that this guy was going to be the only one to get them out. What it turned out to be was that the legal officer was the only other guy that had his name on, on, on documents about to go to the SEC.

And so there was a 200 page technical document that they figured that he was the one that knew that inside out, given he'd read it a dozen or more or 1000 times or however many times you read these types of things. And and they didn't really think that the market would say, oh wow, the legal guys are

therefore there's a problem. So as I understand it, they've they've been doing calls at the end of last week with, with management with brokers and some of the key shareholders, investors in the in the United States and sort of placated them on that. But I mean, again, it's just another example. You look at that price action and say it's a 50% sell off warranted. And the answer is no, because it's still a producing asset.

You know, they've still got another plant that they've proven in Rosita that they've, they've got up and running. They, they use those well fields that from, from last cycle and they're developing their next one. So you know, you kind of turn around and say on a valuation perspective, it's, it's screening pretty cheaply. You know, the good thing is, is there's call options in the US. So for me, that was an easy way to, to flex back, back up there was to, to buy some call options on that.

So if it does does continue to flounder around or or you know, for whatever reason decide to go lower, it's not going to hurt me too much. You think is boss appear to be in a prime position with them one, because if they are under financial stress, then if they do have to raise money and boss did want to take, they're obviously they've ain't got project level interest with Alta Mesa. But if they did want to move on them, there'd be a hell of a lot

cheaper on a share price basis. But they've got the option to, you know, wait for more pain if they want to. What do you think? How do you think boss is sitting? Like is it a negative effect on them or more of a positive long term? I think it's positive. I think it's sort of gives them, I mean, I've, I've not, I don't know the details of the joint venture agreement, but Duncan's proven to me over 8 years to be

pretty savvy operator. So I'd imagine that there's the ability for them to get more involved in that, in that project if, if there was going to be a problem and, and you know, the reality is they've, they've the two companies have got a good relationship. So, you know, if Encore for whatever reason is in play, there's potential levers that

could be pulled there. Again, I don't have any of that information and would be, you know, sitting there thinking that it would be naive to think they're not in play down here because, you know, they, they're in a good jurisdiction in South Texas there. They've got good ability to ramp there. And they're also in some other places like Wyoming and South Dakota with some good assets.

So, so you know, I I would, it would be silly if boss was not having a think about things, if if it started getting interesting around other parties. Right. What do you think about what would you, you're being pretty supportive of boss along the journey, so I assume you're bullish on him. What do you what would you would you like to see them go overseas or like they've just picked up the exploration JV ground in NT? Hunting for another Jabberluka like everyone else's, no doubt.

Do you think having US operations and another jurisdiction, another culture would make the business a bit more complex? Would you rather see him stay in Australia? What are you thinking? Well, I mean, you know, I mean, firstly, I think that that he's got Andy Wilde working with him now and, and Andy knows that part of Australia pretty well. It's some pretty, pretty good ground up there. So and a pretty easy way to get a foothold into into having a sniff around there.

So I think, you know, it'd be interesting to watch, watch that. I think that that earnings structured pretty well. But yeah, I mean, look, it it there was a reason he moved in with that strategic joint venture with Encore. And, you know, it would be, it would be, I would be much prefer him to be in in the US with those guys doing things and running their all over things where they've already got the ability to sort of lean on the Encore team than other jurisdictions.

I mean, I don't see, I don't see these. I mean, I know he used to be in the movie. I don't see there's much value out in him being there or Canada's too, too hard. And you know, every other jurisdiction's kind of marginal if you're a player like him, you know, and maybe Australia gets more interesting if the federal election changes things And and you know, Roger Cook relaxes or Christopher Lee up there in QLD relaxes.

Maybe there's some, you know, there's some opportunity there, but but you know, a lot of it's needs work. So you know again, how you can be short Canadian developers on a tariff basket and not long US uranium projects on the other side just befuddles me. But you know the time will come

there. How do you, how do you think Boss's attitude towards M&A in general may have changed given the the recent share price kind of movements like there was Jabiluka and they kind of showed showed their hand their interest there before everything kind of went S with ERA? That set off a bloody snowball, didn't it? Yeah. And then Encore as well that that deal was struck when the stock price was was much higher as well. What do you kind of think their

attitude would be right now? How they would kind of fund that, you know? Yeah. I mean that's, that's the problem with the whole sector, right. There's there's not a huge amount of confidence from any CEO to really consider serious M&A. And even though there's some phenomenal deals that could be done, I mean, you know, you kind of sit there and say, OK, yes, your share prices is is not performing, but but you know, it's a sector wide problem.

And I mean, I think it comes down to a, a CEO like him having some strategic conversations with, with the right shareholders and, and sort of filling them out as to what their view is. Because I mean, you know, if you get your, your register in support of what you're doing and you're doing something that's, I mean, we've seen a lot of M&A and consolidation in, in the uranium sector just to get a bigger ETF weight, right? Like there's real no accretion.

A lot of it doesn't make sense. It's land grabs. It's all this sort of stuff. They're probably all regretting it now 'cause they're bigger weights in the ETF and getting

Hammond on the way down. But you know, it's, it's, if it's a truly a creative deal and, and you've got a group of shareholders on your register that think that that this is truly a sort of 2020 like opportunity where this is just going to go again, then I don't think you're going to get too badly punished if you're doing a, a deal that people believe in. I think hence why you know being somewhere that investors are already comfortable with you being. On the deal front, how are you

reflecting on on Paladin Fission? Sort of, you know, now we're in March. I think the deal kind of closed after a pretty lengthy process late December. Dust has settled. Inside yeah yeah well I mean I guess the the market seems to be wants to wait for what they're going to you know they're going through running through the ruler through that project and.

And. And looking at all the studies and the costings and, and what have you, and, and they're probably, you know, I wouldn't be moving too fast on it if I was them at the moment because you'd probably want to bring

that out in a better market. But yeah, I mean, I don't, I mean, Full disclosure, I didn't own fishing just because of, you know, I just had different views on, on, on the project compared to what they were telling me. And, and, and I don't see it being a pre 2030 project anyway in my models. I won't tell you where I've got it starting just in case they're listening. But but you know, I mean it, it gives them a foothold, I guess in, in a pretty good

jurisdiction. And it's, it's a much better asset than, than, than some of the other things they were pointing to in their portfolio. But yeah, it's got work to do. But again, they don't really need to be doing much, very much with it at the moment. Investors and shareholders have sort of got over the fact that the deal's done with the benefit of hindsight. Was it done at the right time? It's the deal's done, you know, so it's something they can point to as an an eventual second project.

Do you do you have comfort on their on their balance sheet? Obviously they you know, absorbed a bunch of the cash from from fishing, which is handy and the last kind of quarterly, but you know, maybe showed things were OK. But it came out in the half of your accounts that there was actually a pretty chunky prepaid in there, which you know was it

was in the was in the detail. Accounting for a good chunk of operating cash flow, so you know where how do you sit on the on the on the balance sheet front for Paladin? I mean, I'm, I'm more focused on, on what it looks like in the fourth quarter, you know, because regardless of what they were saying at the beginning and they, they kind of learnt the hard way those stockpiles are and not an ore body.

And, you know, there was plenty of sort of stories as to what sort of material was getting chucked on those at the end of the days. And you know, they're going to me, they're going to have to sort of prove that, that they can ramp up the mining of that ore body successfully when they go into mining, which kind of has me just holding out to the

to the third quarter. And just, you know, once I get some confidence there, Oh, don't worry too much about the balance sheet because they'll be able to get a, a consistent grade and, and be able to, you know, prove their ability to ramp that that asset a bit better. But, you know, they're kind of just in a weird, weird zone here.

And you know, with all the smoke and mirrors about timing of deliveries and sales and you know this sale missed that quarter and what have you, you know, I don't anyway it's, it's not a, a core position for at the moment. They we always set up on site wise plus or equals more or what have been what happened and with tipping those trucks I think.

The developers guy, the ones of ones of interest on the ASX I can think of. You know, Bannerman Deep yellow the in in Namibia. Are you, are you just thinking that they get delayed in this kind of environment sort of further and further incrementally? Yeah, I mean, look, there was obviously a site visit there after in Davao and a bunch of brokers and investors saw Paladin, saw Bannerman deep Yellow and maybe one or two

others. And, you know, I think a lot of them came back quite invigorated as to the the site preparation that Bannerman had been doing. And so from that perspective, you know, I kind of look at them and, and say, you know, they're definitely making the right noises and definitely preparing themselves. And, you know, like they've got a reasonably long timeline before they actually get pounds out. So but yeah, it's going to be the next six months, you know, get through June.

And you know, I think you'll definitely, I mean, what I think is potentially the, the, the, the, the pinch point, there will be price and then, you know, the cost of debt or, or, or they can go to the equity market, but everything else they're doing is kind of preparing themselves. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that that continues, right? So if the price is not there, then they probably just delay a

little bit. And, you know, like, Brandon's been quite clear on that and Gav's been running around town here last week updating everybody as to, to to what things look like. So, you know, they're making progress. You know, Deep Yellow is taking a slightly more conservative approach where John's saying I'm ready to go, but I I'm not willing to do anything until until the price is right. And, you know, he's sort of March in the end of this month, I think.

Isn't he is, is that, is that where he is at the moment, end of March? Or if I do, which was December, Yeah. So, you know, the problem with setting a date is you've already slipped it once, but I wouldn't be upset with him if he slipped it again if he didn't think the market conditions are right to go and do something there.

So, you know, there might be others that that kind of say what's going on. But you know, I'm a really firm believer that like Kenicka is kind of saying and and what the conversion and enrichment guys, man saying in the market, you know, prove there's a market for our pounds. And if that manifests itself in price, then we'll go on, go on, make the decision, you know, to build.

But we're not going to get landed out here like a shag in the rock when you guys decide you don't want the pennants because they can't go on the spot market. So I'm not too worried about a couple of those projects because as I said, jurisdiction's fine, permits are fine, you know, long lead items, all that sort of stuff. It it seems that it's just price that's holding back or end.

OR or energy flagged FID for I think it was roughly this quarter as well. Mauritania not not in the movie. Do you think that gets pushed to? You know, look, they've, they've kind of surprised me, to be honest. They've, it wasn't that long ago that Mauritania had zero nuclear IAE, i.e., AE and none of that. No policies, no government, no legislation, no radioactive handling, no transport, no waste. And so that country's come a long way.

And you know, they seem quite comfortable with the fact that they've solved a bunch of those, a bunch of those issues around what they need for developing. But again, yeah, it's going to come down to are they going to be able to get the price they need to secure the debt that they need and other the, the debt providers they're talking to, are they going to be in a

position to move? Are they forced to, we're not forced to, they go down the route of, of a joint venture with, with a, a sovereign nation to, you know, to, to, to, to get financing to do that. And, you know, for, as I said, it, it comes down to like to them, it's, it's funding like they need to solve that funding. They need to either be able to convince investors that it's a good jurisdiction, they can get the things done or there's, you know, a global agency or, or a

joint venture. So there's, there's still a few things that need to happen there. But you know, as I said, it's kind of I've been happily surprised as to the progress they've made in country.

I've, I've got a couple on your, your portfolio allocation that I'm interested to hear your thoughts on. Just going back to what you said earlier about incentive prices pushing out because of all these costs that have come out over the past year or so. You know, ultimately that's not great for for the miners themselves because that hammers the the profit, but uranium price going even higher. So, so firstly, how does that kind of tweak how you allocate?

Do you think more about putting more of the fund into physical on the back of that sort of news? Yeah, I mean, I've I've been kind of wrong on on, on sort of backing the the successful restart stories. But then I was looking through sort of performance elsewhere and there's not many places you've been right, you've just been less wrong. And, and so, you know, I, I have

not moved into spot. And at one stage I was kind of playing that spot discount game that I was talking about before, you know, when it was a big discount, buying it and when it came in, sell it back out. And then I kind of realised that I was probably participate, you know, contributing to, to, to making my own life more difficult because it was some of that was not letting the spot go to a premium.

And so, and, and I always kind of, you know, glass half full was thinking that these turning points around the just around the corner and that, you know, I wanted to be in the equity. So, so if anything, it's, it's I've not been anywhere near. I've not really added very much in explorers except, you know, 2 that are doing something. And I've kind of avoided a lot of that ACM in in the bottom end of the capital stack because I just think that's you need to prove the thesis is back.

You need to, to, to start shaking out these shorts and, you know, and, and, and then they'll all come and raise money anyway because they haven't been able to. So, you know, if you think there's an exploration story that that is going to get some legs and I'll get it on a capital rise. So, yeah, I have sort of been a little bit heavier on the because the reality is when those heavily shorted stocks start moving, you know, they're

going to run pretty hard. And and hopefully I'll go on a global tour and, you know, go and meet some of these blokes in Manhattan that are now mixing cocktails because they've lost their jobs. So things short uranium, but. I'd love an invite to that to that dinner.

Just one more quickly on the on the portfolio allocation while we're on it. You mentioned last year, I think in an interview that you did kind of recently that you put a lot of the fun toward the tech side of things giving you flexibility in the nuclear opportunities name. So I think you, you quoted 25 odd percent allocation towards these things. I'm, I'm a little less aware of how that basket has kind of performed relative to the the uranium kind of names. Is the allocation still quite

chunky on on that side? Have you changed your thinking in recent times? Well, the the good. So it was actually up around 35% on a national basis, but most of the exposure was via call options. So, so it's, there was a few stocks, I mean, there was a few names where I had still had stock as well. And, and after we got a little bit of a bounce on after that DeepSeek stuff, I, I hedged most of that out with some put options as well, any of the stock I had.

And then I'm just starting to dip my toe back into some cool options in these baskets because it's it's just so volatile. It's just it's hard to like there's some of them are screaming at me saying buy me, buy me, but I just can't.

I mean, I don't want to. I don't think I'm going to miss the turn because it was such a sort of thematic and meme that that, you know, a lot of tourists are in there and a lot of tourists are out And I don't think they're necessarily heavily short at it, but they're just not there at the moment. So, so I kind of got some call options there. The, the positions I have are hedged out and, and most of them aren't causing me any grief if they go down.

So we'll just sort of play that one by and see how it, see how it runs. I mean, the reality is none of it's changed. None of that thesis has changed. You know, Oh my God, whoever it was, Microsoft cancelled a few leases, you know, which some bank in the, in the US or Canada reported and, and everyone sort of went, oh, but you know, that's more getting hit on just rotation, right? There's this sort of rotation coming out, a lot of that stuff.

And they were the kind of investors that were there. So, so I'm playing it. So I kind of cautious and as I said, I was lucky that it's just such a good option market there. I was able to not have too much of that deep, deep, deep heartburn from deep sea. How are you weighing up all

those as you're saying, if everything's screaming at you, buy me, buy me, buy me at the moment. But is if spot is going down and there's so hard to get info on who's contracted, who's not. So like, well, boss, we were talking about previously, like I think we're aware. I think we're pretty aware they're going to be, they've been selling into the spot and then possibly going to. So you can see why those equities are going down because a lot of them haven't yet to put the big contracts in.

But how do you why up what's cheap and what's not when the Sprite spot price is down and not knowing what they've actually contracted out or not? Yeah. I mean it's, it's so that that's a really good question. I think are kind of looking at at so of those who are restarting, I mean, the reality is most of them aren't producing enough pounds to to really 'cause themselves a problem if they were to just sit them in the converters. You know, So you look at at at, I mean, you said boss.

I mean, he's actually just as I said, just probably monetize that 250,000 lbs at a hundred U.S. dollars. So, you know, like there's cash flow from that Encore loan that that means they could probably just now ship some drums and sit them in Confidant or Chemical or wherever they're going and White, you know, it doesn't need to do anything. the US guys, there was a few, yes, that was selling one probably continued into the 70s but has stopped again now.

So, but again, that was sort of inventory they had. They're not necessarily replacing it with millions of pounds. There's no pressure for them. But yeah, I mean, I think some of them, there is a thought process that the longer this goes on, the the more desperate some of these guys might get and, and, and sell their pounds. But you know, as I said, it's not actually a huge amount of pounds that that, that, that are sitting around as a result of

that. I mean, to the earlier point I made, you know, I look, I look at the US for example, and you know, from, from like you're seeing Laird Encore at these levels, they're producing pounds and Canadian pounds are allegedly going to get 10% more expensive. I mean, it's just I, I can't understand how some of these guys who kind of through most of their CapEx, most of their cost issues and I've got can and you know, cake and a can ready to

sell. I can't sort of see why they're all trading down as much as the, the whole sector. They should be trading a little bit better. But yeah, I mean, anybody with a legacy contract you got to look carefully at because if they're behind on their ramp up and they're just producing enough to deliver into a contract, what's the price of that? Not going to be 80 bucks.

Now I don't think any of them got them fixed, is that if if spot's 20 odd plus percent below term which it is at the moment, like surely there must be more activity happening with carry trades with spot at the moment or not yet? I mean, look, I guess part of the problem is most of the utilities aren't very well capitalised. So they can't, it's hard for them or harder at these prices to, to run a big carry book because the notional amounts that are out are, are larger, right.

So what about trade utility? Well, that's most of them. I mean, you know, like we're not, we're not, we're not. This is not a, a copper or a, or a iron ore or a met coal or a, or a fuel oil market. You know, we, we don't have the Glencore's, the traffic eras, the, the Mercurias, the, and the banks in this trade, right? Like most of the traders in uranium, no one has ever heard of and, and even physical traders and other commodities have never heard of these guys.

So it's just a, it's a really different, there's only one bank in it and you know, potentially the most well known as Traxxas out of the US who, you know, very specific in what they do. So and the utilities aren't there, right? Like at a $20 price, they had the ability because there was brokers, there was other intermediaries getting involved and getting in the middle of that and kind of financing it

all. But at, you know, at $65 uranium, the, the dollar amounts that you got to do for this. And So what are you going to do? You're going to carry 100,000 lbs for a utility. They don't have the time to sit there and negotiate that sort of stuff. They're trying to get their conversion and enrichment out of Russia. So you know.

What about next Gen. God have probably finished off like you'd say one of the more influential. Then again, you don't know what's influential on the market these days out of consultant problem next Gen., but like quite closer than ever to potentially be be doing some sort of pre construction activities like or like to really start progressing towards some sort of development. Where where are they at? What are we going to say out of

them this year? Do you think in terms of potential funding site activity once that sort of administrative part gets passed by the government? Yeah, I mean, that's exactly it, right. I mean, there's a an assumption based on the timing of the of the Denison hearings that that next Gen. will be pushed back into early 26. You know, and that's just literally an assumption because Denison or a month ahead of next Gen. in some other, you know, bureaucratic thing.

You know, it'll be interesting to see what happens. You know, there's obviously a new Prime Minister in Canada as of today, Mark Carney, sort of be interesting to see whether he drastically wants to change things around, around potentially. I mean, you think about it,

right? You have got Trump wanting to put a 10% tariff on, on all your energy exports to the United States. Why wouldn't you try to remove some of the regulatory burdens to, to, to, to, to say to him, oh, look, there's, there's a whole bunch more that could come on. He's he's ex Goldman Sachs too, So Trump's dealing with a banker now.

Yeah, yeah. The Bank of England Governor, Bank of Canada Governor, he's on the board of Brookfield Renewables. So he was part of that Westinghouse deal what Chemical did with Brookfield Infra. So yeah, he's well, well, well trodden, well trodden career man, you know, but Next Gen. kind of sitting there saying, look, we've got the support of all the nations. Don't look at Denison's timetable.

You know, we've got the Metis Nation, which, you know, it was that part of that news headline saying blah, blah, blah, which is completely irrelevant, not related to the Root 1 project at all, you know, but, but Lee and the team are saying you're

right. Once we get this administration done on the, on the, the hearing date for the the final sign off, we're ready to go. And, you know, I kind of, it's, it's hard not to believe them being outside last year and seeing the preparations they're doing. I mean, everything about that site is built to be a mine,

right? You know, you go up to all these Athabasca sites and you, you're on an ATV going over rocks and pebbles and boulders and, and, and bogs, like everything about that site they've set up to, to be a mine. So, and the reality is yes, leverage to spot whatever, but it's, it's still a phenomenal ore body. And you know, you kind of sit there and say, if you believe

$65, is it trading fairly here? I, I think the answer is absolutely no. If you look at the term price and say, is it trading fairly compared to the term price? No, it's bloody it's, it's ridiculously low valuation because that ore body is phenomenal.

So, you know, I think they again, it's just they're in a short basket of all these banks or Canadian tariffs, which they shouldn't be. And there's a whole bunch of people pointing at headlines that that when you actually peel the layer of the onion back, you work out that OK, yes, there's a spat between the menace nation and and some exploration tenements with the Saskatchewan government.

Nothing to do with next Gen. And then they came out and in support and said we're 100% supportive and the market didn't respond to it. I mean, it's, it's again the mindset where the market is at the moment.

Very good, it'd be interesting once I get deep and can start drilling in between themselves and PLS and see what else there is. I know they've had other hits, but yeah, that's what the the theory is like that old thing joining up. That's like potentially a lot of uranium coming out of that area once though. Yeah, two dope holes to drill at the moment. Yeah, Yeah, no, exactly right. I mean, you know, it's, it's it's leverage Beta is, is, is that one, it's spot goes up.

That thing's going to RIP because, you know, again, you can own that and does better for you than owning the the spots, you know, plus, as I said, the the whole body. Boys, you got anything? I think we're all out, guy. I really appreciate your time. Thank you so much, Guy So. Intrational, mate, but hopefully what are we like, you know, second week of March, Hopefully this comes out just as everything's turning and. We're running hard and.

You got till Friday the. Bottom, bottom and we bounce up from here mate. Yeah, that's gonna be the headline when it comes out. Guy Keller. No, no, don't say pick the bottom. Must say something different. That's right, just keep picking it and you will pick the bottom at some point. It's the title of the Yard. The episode mate, you ready made? Easy boys, But as I said it, I don't. I think it's the thesis hasn't changed. There we go. What? What was his last line there?

Guy Keller picks the bottom. It's like all the people that pick the JFC. If you just keep picking it, you'll pick it eventually. To be confirmed, I reckoned. Yeah, it's right. Thanks to all the partners as always. In the show we had K Drill as well as Quattro Project Engineering. Who has we got? Maddie. By Joe Don't forget about the 100 bucks off for Oz IMM underground operators links in the show notes.

We've got MMS, we've got grounded, We've got CMB ground, sports, CR insurance, WA water boars, swig and cross boundary energy. Who wrote? Who wrote the information contained in this episode of Money of Mine is of general nature only and does not take into account the objectives, financial situation or needs of

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